When streaming media content for consumption by multiple users is received by a storage system, policies may indicate that a single common copy be stored for consumption by any of the users (or at least a subset of the multiple users) or that a unique copy be stored for consumption by each individual user (or at least the users not in the subset). Such policies may be based on legal requirements associated with the content, limitations of the storage system (e.g., available storage space), or other factors. Storing a unique copy of streaming media content for each user presents a number of challenges, including the storage space used in storing multiple copies of the same data.
In accordance with common practice various features shown in the drawings may not be drawn to scale, as the dimensions of various features may be arbitrarily expanded or reduced for clarity. Moreover, the drawings may not depict all of the aspects and/or variants of a given system, method or apparatus admitted by the specification. Finally, like reference numerals are used to denote like features throughout the figures.